• Dear Guest, Please note that adult content is not permitted on this forum. We have had our Google ads disabled at times due to some posts that were found from some time ago. Please do not post adult content and if you see any already on the forum, please report the post so that we can deal with it. Adult content is allowed in the glory hole - you will have to request permission to access it. Thanks, scara

***OMT - Tottenham Hotspur v Aston Villa, Sun May 3rd, 7pm, Villa Park ***

billyiddo said:
Vinai & Lange conducted the managerial search in the summer, both were front and centre with all the press regarding the appointment, talking up the process wrt finding the right man.

Lange was promoted to DoF after Levy had been let go.
Click to expand...
The idea that the CEO cant step up and in is laughable also.....if you think Jan is going badly and you spot things younact, you dont just say "well its noy my role, I am staying out of it". By default its always your role too.
 
Daisuk said:
I know you know this, but it's what they do, it's what they're paid to do. They don't know brick. Gary Neville got sacked after what, 4 months, of coaching Valencia? Their blabber club is just "content" (filler) for people to rest their eyes on because there's nothing else to look at. "Oh, football related, must be good" - no, it's not. Look at your carpet for a better experience for your eyes and mind. Every time I spend five minutes watching The Overlap or similar, I just feel fooled. "Why am I watching this?" - and I go see some Youtube videos on Tool or something instead, and feel a lot better. The pundits are completely and utterly pointless - we just like getting riled up, for some reason - and they're good at doing that, unfortunately.
Click to expand...

Amen to that.👍
 
Raziel said:
He has to be judged, especially if the talk around is remotely true.

- I have no issue with the Frank appointment (as bad and as obvious I thought it was), the issues was sticking with him
- It's very similar to the January decision in that way.

As an executive at this level you make calls, it's always risk/reward, you get paid to make unpopular decisions,

- Reality is he was wrong (even if it was under advice) both times, so badly, it's been catastrophic.
- If the rumours of one of the nepo babies is who stepped in both for Frank out, and to insist on RDZ, he's a dead man walking.
Click to expand...
I just think it's a combination or all of the following for Vinai and John:

- they were trying to copy Arsenal's story and viewed Frank as the "next Arteta". He's here for the long term and there's nothing wrong with the negative football despite short term setbacks in our results.
- they were holding to the same old you can't build anything without continuity, results will eventually come flimflam. That also aligns with how Arsenal were being patient with Arteta in his early years.
- they were behind Frank's appointment and letting him go that early would reflect really badly on their judgment.

And no, don't ask me for any proof.
 
MartyFunkhouser said:
The idea that the CEO cant step up and in is laughable also.....if you think Jan is going badly and you spot things younact, you dont just say "well its noy my role, I am staying out of it". By default its always your role too.
Click to expand...
I don’t want our CEO making football decisions. I want him leaving those to person at the club who’s role it is to do so.

The CEO making football decisions is why you end up with Santini instead of Jol or sacking Poch to bring in Mourinho.

If Lange is still DoF after this summer I’ll start to get concerned.
 
Finney Is Back said:
I don’t want our CEO making football decisions. I want him leaving those to person at the club who’s role it is to do so.

The CEO making football decisions is why you end up with Santini instead of Jol or sacking Poch to bring in Mourinho.

If Lange is still DoF after this summer I’ll start to get concerned.
Click to expand...
So you also dont wanna see a CEO to act when there are signs of performance distress or negligence within the ranks? I find that a really odd take TBH.
 
MartyFunkhouser said:
So you also dont wanna see a CEO to act when there are signs of performance distress or negligence within the ranks? I find that a really odd take TBH.
Click to expand...

I think you're both right.

Levy's job should have been to leverage his considerable skills and focus on what he was good at. Great leaders then introduce other senior members to cover their own portfolio gaps. Levy clearly had gaps on the football ops side but was too stubborn to get out of the way and let more skilled people manage those aspects. That is, if he could even identify his own gaps. I would have never had him anywhere near hiring managers. I would never have had him in a negotiation room. He hasn't got the sales and marketing DNA and he hasn't got the charisma to build the types of relationships that close deals. His running of an organisation definitely doesn't build the right culture either and that permeates around the place. His comms were always terrible.

However, the buck stops at the CEO. It was all on Levy's watch and he was accountable. Ultimately, the reason he was removed in the end was because his running of the club (especially post stadium opening) was shockingly bad. The conflict in what you say is because of his blindspots. Yes, he would need to act as CEO but his lack of competence in football ops was always introducing his blindspots.

The net, net is that we needed someone different and now we get to find out. Way too early to judge the new regime in my opinion. Perhaps they will have to intervene less and less as they make the right hires beneath them. Levy never did and became transfixed with Caplehorn, Cullen and Collecott.
 
Muttley said:
I think you're both right.
Click to expand...

If we are having a dreadful time of it, like Jan this year, I don't expect the CEO to just sit idle and allow it to play out because there is a structure. I expect him to be pulling teams together and saying "what do we need" thats called leadership.

Thats not the same as things that have happened in the past. I think like with alot of things people are going too far in the other direction because of what they believe were the faults of Levy.
 
I would never have had him in a negotiation room.
You get the impression that Levy had a purely transactional approach to negotiation - and he seems to have been extremely successful at that. The issue is whether an approach which factored in longer relationships, would have been better in the long run.
 
Muttley said:
I think you're both right.

Levy's job should have been to leverage his considerable skills and focus on what he was good at. Great leaders then introduce other senior members to cover their own portfolio gaps. Levy clearly had gaps on the football ops side but was too stubborn to get out of the way and let more skilled people manage those aspects. That is, if he could even identify his own gaps. I would have never had him anywhere near hiring managers. I would never have had him in a negotiation room. He hasn't got the sales and marketing DNA and he hasn't got the charisma to build the types of relationships that close deals. His running of an organisation definitely doesn't build the right culture either and that permeates around the place. His comms were always terrible.

However, the buck stops at the CEO. It was all on Levy's watch and he was accountable. Ultimately, the reason he was removed in the end was because his running of the club (especially post stadium opening) was shockingly bad. The conflict in what you say is because of his blindspots. Yes, he would need to act as CEO but his lack of competence in football ops was always introducing his blindspots.

The net, net is that we needed someone different and now we get to find out. Way too early to judge the new regime in my opinion. Perhaps they will have to intervene less and less as they make the right hires beneath them. Levy never did and became transfixed with Caplehorn, Cullen and Collecott.
Click to expand...

I would have levy running the club in the wider context every day of the week.
However, in modern football at a club of our size you need someone who knows football and that is where levy fell down, he could never find that department head for football operations.
 
MartyFunkhouser said:
So you also dont wanna see a CEO to act when there are signs of performance distress or negligence within the ranks? I find that a really odd take TBH.
Click to expand...
I want to see the CEO put in place the very best person and then listen to that person and not to undermine them thinking that they know more than the person who is the expert in that field. If the DoF's decisions are poor and put us in trouble then I'd like the CEO to replace the DoF and put their trust in that person. The last thing this club needs IMO is to have another CEO who has no idea about football making football decisions.

I suspect Lange will be replaced this summer, that will be Vinai doing his job. I hope he then trusts the new DoF to make the football decisions. Otherwise the odds are we'll mostly be making really bad football decisions.
 
Finney Is Back said:
I want to see the CEO put in place the very best person and then listen to that person and not to undermine them thinking that they know more than the person who is the expert in that field. If the DoF's decisions are poor and put us in trouble then I'd like the CEO to replace the DoF and put their trust in that person. The last thing this club needs IMO is to have another CEO who has no idea about football making football decisions.

I suspect Lange will be replaced this summer, that will be Vinai doing his job. I hope he then trusts the new DoF to make the football decisions. Otherwise the odds are we'll mostly be making really bad football decisions.
Click to expand...

The CEO is a leader and should also be a fire fighter.

Sitting the team down and asking them what they need to have the best possible chance moving forward would be IMO the kind of leadership any club needs.

If a CEO waits for his DOF to fail when you can see the cracks appearing because he wants to just respect the reporting lines then sorry that would not and never would be leadership for me.

There is a level for me where the CEO should show leadership and pull rank for the better of the club, thats not waiting till a seasons end when it might be too late. Thats not aimed at Vinai, thats all clubs.

The issue here is the Levy scar tissue makes people want the total opposite when in fact its should be something and somewhere in the middle
 
Finney Is Back said:
I want to see the CEO put in place the very best person and then listen to that person and not to undermine them thinking that they know more than the person who is the expert in that field. If the DoF's decisions are poor and put us in trouble then I'd like the CEO to replace the DoF and put their trust in that person. The last thing this club needs IMO is to have another CEO who has no idea about football making football decisions.

I suspect Lange will be replaced this summer, that will be Vinai doing his job. I hope he then trusts the new DoF to make the football decisions. Otherwise the odds are we'll mostly be making really bad football decisions.
Click to expand...

I do see where you’re coming from and I can see a level of sympathy for Vinai in that he came into this club and had to learn a lot extremely quickly. I also do think there are some corrections they are making which are good, in terms of loosening the wage bill.

I think my issue is more…the CEO job at a scale up is different to the CEO job in a listed company. In the latter, I think you can be more hands off, trust your direct reports, and stay above the fray. In a scale up, you might be a founder, you probably have more curiosity about how things are working, and will continue to iterate more quickly based on the reality on the ground.

I think Vinai was operating like the CEO of a big corporate when he needed to be operating like a founder. He was clearly trusting Lange, and I’m sure he thought it was the right thing to do to trust him. But it wasn’t, and even if he thinks it’s the right thing to do to listen to him, the buck will still stop with Vinai. He had the power to step in. He had the power to overrule. Whatever the Lange / Frank project was, clearly it wasn’t landing with the players. And I think Levy for all his faults would have sniffed that out. Vinai was too willing to let it ride.

Maybe he learns from that and gets better, as his errors could be argued were less about football judgement and more a consequence of organisational dynamics and structure, and he needed to realise what the Spurs job was, and as a new person, who he can trust. But he absolutely cannot repeat that mistake again. And Lange just needs to be gone. There’s simply no justification for keeping him. The failed managerial recommendation, the decision to stick with him, and the defence of the lack of signings in January while shipping Brennan out. I don’t want Lange to learn from his mistakes, his are too bad to trust again. He needs to be gone, or at the very least demoted to work under an actual football executive who we can trust with the football vision and strategy, and who will work hand in glove with De Zerbi.
 
Raziel said:
I'd also say yesterday Spurs had a "feature" I haven't seen in a long time, we looked like the kind of team you don't want to play against, Villa was suffocated in that first 60 minutes, no tea wants to play against that. Even when we were a good team, we had moments of being open or easy to play against. RDZ has us looking like one of his sides, awful to play against, pressing, intensity, traps.
Click to expand...

I think we were excellent tactically and clearly the players have had the time to fully buy into the De Zerbi system.

People have commented on us not losing a 50-50 and while I think that was true, it was helped by the fact that we created pressing traps and mini pressing overloads every time we wanted to win the ball. It requires immense bravery, like Danso for example pushing right up to win it, but I think that’s the reason we looked like we had the extra man. We started to see this against Brighton and it really came together against Villa. I do wonder how teams will look to exploit it, and I imagine we will alter the triggers each game depending on how the opposition likes to play. But it was brilliant to watch, we looked so well drilled.

The other thing I liked is that we always looked completely in control, by virtue of having an option to go backwards. But it wasn’t going backwards on a turgid way with a lack of ideas, it was to regain control and then to attack wherever the space was. And that might have been shorter or more direct. The team looked so intelligent and calm, never hurried off the ball because there was always an option, and then from Kinsky onwards seeing what the opposition were doing and playing accordingly.

We really shouldn’t go down playing like this because we looked like too much of a class above. It was too well coached, too intelligent, too sophisticated, and importantly the players had properly bought in.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back